Recently completed video games

[whatsinaname22]

After trying to pick it up for like the fourth time Metal Gear Solid 3 finally clicked for me and I finished it. I kind of had to keep pushing myself, as I'd played the beginning so many times, but when I got to The End's fight I knew I was going to finish it. All in all I'd say it was awesome, until the extended rail shooting part, that being right near the end kind of soured it for me. 

[Tanukitsune]

I beat Axiom Verge on the Vita, I did not expect a vania to have so many button it need to add FOUR on the touch screen.

 

The pixel art is amazing and I liked how the drone gives a fresh feel to the game and how you eventually have to combine several powers at the same time to reach some places, but some places are just too complex for me to bother.

 

The "secret world" is a great thing since it's unique and random for each game.

 

You could say this is the line of "like X only better" (As in Undertale is like Mother only better), but I'm kinda torn. It seems overly complex for no reason and the game even includes moments where you can translate alien language... manually. Not too mention it has TOO MANY weapons, I know it sounds crazy, but it has so many that so many of them are not needed and never used.

 

The fact that non are essential to solve any puzzles is a bit of a bummer too, well ONE is, the one you get at the start, but soon you'll never need to use it again.

 

In so many aspects it's flawless, but in others it just doesn't feel right, I guess what I'm saying that no, it's not better than Super Metroid to me, but it's still pretty amazing?

[Griddlelol]

Ah! It finally came out on Vita? I need to download it and finally play it.

[twmac]

I just 'finished' Freedom Wars. In the beginning it was the best sequel to Lost Planet 2 and the closest thing I could imagine to an 'Attack on Titan' game.

 

There are so many things to learn about the combat (I've not fully mastered all of it) and there are a ton of layers to it despite the limited number of enemy types. You can grapple hook on to these giant enemies and either try to pull them to the ground or you can jump onto them and try and amputate limbs or weapons attached to them.

 

The first 40-50 times it is really exciting but the problem comes with the crafting system.

 

As you level up your guns and stuff you need more specific components from certain types of enemies, but the problem here is that how and which level will provide that for you is fairly impenetrable.

 

I ground through one 45 minute level only to find that I had not picked up the Carapace: Will O'Engine Mk I but instead collected a lot of Carapace: Will O'Engine MKII, so I went to a different level and accidentally got Marksmen: Will O'Engine MKI and not Carapace ones. What are Carapaces? They come from a type of enemies not called Carapaces.

 

There are T-Type and S-Type enemies that are more commonly known as Ramosas and Paradoxas but the game freely exchanges those two terms without explaining.

 

So, yeah frustrating but not enough to break me until I got to the final boss, a three level series of fights that you can fail and have to redo. The final boss is deeply frustrating and I ended up going online and begging some over powered dudes to help me beat it in about 5 minutes.

 

So, you can keep on playing to lower your freedom level (the plot is that you are sinner that has to do missions to try and earn your freedom that lowers your years of service - you start at about a million and I finished up with about seven hundred thousand years still to serve) but the levels now feel so hard and your AI so stupid that the only way to realistically do it is to go online. My connection in Thailand is simply not reliable enough to do that at the moment so I guess I am going to give up.

 

That said - still a really fun game until that final chapter and I really wish there was a comprehensive guide out there for when you get frustrated.

[elmuerte]

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

The game is really beautiful, also an interesting story, the sound is also great. But the game really puts in effort to make the experience suck. This walking simulator has quite a big game world, which is nice, except that you move really really really slow. The game isn't really linear, so you often have to back track to visit a part you missed. But this back tracking can easily consume a couple of minutes. So wandering through this world is quite tedious. And then there's the almost total lack of interactivity. Unlike in Gone Home or Firewatch, you cannot inspect anything. The only interactive thing to do are turning on/off a TV, opening some doors, turning on/off some lights. So basically this game is just walking from invisible story point to invisible story point.

I apparently did not find all story elements, but I'm not going back to find the missing one.

[aoanla]

I'd say something about how treating Everybody's Gone to the Rapture as a game (rather than a kind of art exhibit or something) is harmful to your experience of it, but people would just shout at me like last time, so...

[elmuerte]

If I had to walk minutes between pieces in an art exhibit, and I could only observe them from a distance, I wouldn't like it either.

[aoanla]

But at least you aren't supposed to run in art exhibits, so there's that?

[osmosisch]

Stop being intentionally obtuse.

[aoanla]

I'm actually not: the point of art exhibits is that you take your time to soak in the things around you, rather than running from place to place to achieve some kind of aim. (If you do go to an art exhibit and try to get to just the most famous piece in it, then you're missing the point, and usually have a bad time.) The word is probably "contemplative". 

It seems to me that Everybody's Gone To The Rapture shares a similar intent in the way you interact with it - the environment is lovely, there's bits of story around to follow, but trying to aggressively "complete stuff" in a gamey way spoils the experience.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I think there's a difference between approaching it too much as a game to be completed/beaten/mastered and thinking "The pace of this is too slow, because it's lingering longer than necessary on things."

 

You don't run in a museum but the curator is not physically blocking you from moving on when you think you're done with a piece because the curator says "No no, there's more to think about here.".

[Trip Hazard]

I finished the first part of Broken Age Really fun so far, I'm particularly digging the hipster lumberjack.

 

All downhill from here, right?

[Tanukitsune]

I finally finished Gladiator Begins, an old PSP fighting game where depending on which gladiator patron you fight for, you can unlock story lines for each.

 

One patron was asking me to kill her ex-lover gladiators, while another is the daughter of a great general who goes MIA all of the sudden. This was the story line I followed and I really enjoyed when I had to protect her from hired thugs in an alley and I had to equip myself with whatever was lying around. A chair becomes an improvised shield and so on.

 

Suddenly the emperor's son asked me for a special mission and led me down a completely different path and I never saw the coliseum again. I might try to other paths since my equipment carries over and see if I can simply play in the coliseum until I pay for my freedom? 

[jennegatron]

Trip Hazard, many backers seemed to like the increase in difficulty. I did not. YMMV.

[Bjorn]

I finished the first part of Broken Age Really fun so far, I'm particularly digging the hipster lumberjack.

 

All downhill from here, right?

 

Just don't have as high of expectations for part 2 as 1.  It's good, but I just didn't think it was as good as 1 was. 

[eot]

But at least you aren't supposed to run in art exhibits, so there's that?

I haven't played the game, but I remember the big fuss around the walking speed in it and the developers being really adamant that nobody move too fast. They're free to design their game however they choose of course, but I think having an absurdly slow walk speed has the opposite effect from what they intend. For me it does anyway, because it doesn't calm me down, or make me pay more attention to the environment or whatever. It brings all my attention to the controls, it makes my middle finger hurt because I'm holding 'w' for an hour straight (Dear Esther). I get that they don't want you bunny jumping, but walking around an art exhibit (or just walking in general) is different from using a controller. One can be inherently enjoyable and the other one can't.

[Tanukitsune]

I recently beat Affordable Space Adventures from the recent Humble Nintendo Bundle and it was pretty amazing.

 

I haven't enjoyed a puzzle so much since The Talos Principle. You're a tiny space ship stranded on a planet and the WiiU controller is the ship's control panel. As you progress, the ship slowly repairs itself and more systems are online, like an engine that runs on electricity instead of a combustion one. 

 

The levels have turrets or similar that react to specific amounts of noise, heat or electricity and the puzzles are based on toggling systems on and off to find a solution. You eventually can even change your landing gear so that it can stick to a wall or slide. It gave me quite a few moments that gave me the "OH, AM I SO CLEVER!" moments, which I love in puzzle games.

[elmuerte]

Mad Max

The world is quite a boring place to be in and you do pretty much the same thing over and over again. How is still different from Just Cause? Well, there traversing the world is interesting, and there is plenty opportunity to goof off. Mad Max is like Just Cause with just cars, no grappling hook, no parachute, pretty much only melee combat, and a dead brown world.

[gdf]

I finally finished Gladiator Begins, an old PSP fighting game where depending on which gladiator patron you fight for, you can unlock story lines for each.

 

One patron was asking me to kill her ex-lover gladiators, while another is the daughter of a great general who goes MIA all of the sudden. This was the story line I followed and I really enjoyed when I had to protect her from hired thugs in an alley and I had to equip myself with whatever was lying around. A chair becomes an improvised shield and so on.

 

Suddenly the emperor's son asked me for a special mission and led me down a completely different path and I never saw the coliseum again. I might try to other paths since my equipment carries over and see if I can simply play in the coliseum until I pay for my freedom? 

 

That sounds weirdly interesting. What's this game like mechanically? One of my favourite PS2 games was Shadow of Rome, if you like the gladiatorial combat angle it might be worth a punt.

 

Yesterday I finished Firewatch on my second sitting. It was a really sunny afternoon and our living room overlooks a nice neigbourhood garden, so I opened the windows to enhance the nature vibes using real life bird cheeps which was unexpectedly cool. That said we are also close to one of the main roads in the city and the occasional passing truck kind of burst the illusion a bit!

I don't actually finish many games these days (for some reason every other game I own seems to have turned into fucking Assassin's Creed). It was nice to have a Portal-length experience that was actually really engaging front to back. The podcast hosts that worked on it must have heard this a thousand times but seriously, you guys did a fantastic job. Some of the best writing and voice acting I've ever seen/heard in a game for sure, and I can't believe how authentic my relationship with Delilah felt. The books and other miscellany really helped to enhance the sense of this as an existing world. The only criticism I really have is mechanical, in that movement, climbing and so on felt a bit janky. But that's a total nitpick.

Oddly specific thing that might only apply to me: it was also a massive relief not to have dozens of hidden collectibles scattered around the place. Obviously there are bits and pieces which, when found, actually enhance the experience if you care about it. But holy shit I cannot resist the impulse to scour every nook and cranny for shiny bullshit in every other game and I seriously felt so much more relaxed knowing there was no (completely arbitrary, I know) pressure to find audio logs or dog tags or artifacts or whatever. The forest was a gorgeous world to just exist in and this enhanced it a lot for me, so kudos. 

[Tanukitsune]

That sounds weirdly interesting. What's this game like mechanically? One of my favourite PS2 games was Shadow of Rome, if you like the gladiatorial combat angle it might be worth a punt.

 

Each button corresponds to which area you can attack and when you continuously attack the same area they will lose what ever they have equipped in that area, which you can take if you want to. If you're desperate enough and don't have a weapon you can bash them with the scattered pieces of armor.

 

There is a stamina meter so you just don't spam special attack than you learn from using each "style" of combat. 

[jonbjohns]

I just finished Hyper Light Drifter. I did half of the game before the "invincible" patch and the other half after.
 

I liked the HP part of the update, I'm indifferent about the invincibility frames. I guess my indifference is because my play style didn't change before and after the update, so I wasn't really reaping the benefit from the invincibility frames.

 

I love the game. I love the vibe. I love the combat. I didn't really like exploring in the game that much.

[mikemariano]

Yesterday I finished Firewatch on my second sitting. It was a really sunny afternoon and our living room overlooks a nice neigbourhood garden, so I opened the windows to enhance the nature vibes using real life bird cheeps which was unexpectedly cool. That said we are also close to one of the main roads in the city and the occasional passing truck kind of burst the illusion a bit!

 

The highly anticipated Firewatch / Euro Truck Simulator crossover.

[Professor Video Games]

I finished a handful of games recently:

 

Pikmin 3 - It's more Pikmin and that's good. The sound Pikmin make when they die still breaks my heart. I hope they keep making these forever.

Puzzle Agent 1 & 2 - Mixed bag puzzle quality-wise, but I really like Graham Annable's art and the Fargo/Twin Peaks inspired story and setting was fun.

Dropsy - Adorable. Great art and animation and a totally uplifting. Oh my god when he hugs anything it's just the best (and you can hug EVERYTHING). I did get stuck a few times (the day/night cycle especially led to some frustration) and the low-res images people "speak" in were hard to decode sometimes but not a dealbreaker by any means. Ending spoiler comment:

I love the Dropsy character a lot, but King Dropsy sounds like a recipe for disaster.

The Unfinished Swan - Lots of cool visuals and it mixes up the gameplay more than I figured but whatever metaphors they were going for kinda fell apart by the end. Not a big deal though because I found it pretty engaging moment to moment and it's not especially long.

[jennegatron]

I'm so glad you liked Dropsy!!! Fave game of 2015.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I just beat Dark Souls, surprisingly. The first time I tried to play it I got just over halfway through before the game crushed me and I abandoned it.

This time I played differently, got into the groove and after the halfway point it just became easier and easier. I was sorta over leveled, but also I think it's just not as punishing when you find a way to play that works for you. Good game, the second half got so much easier tho that I'd almost want to get another one, but I must resist the temptation and jam instead.